Ars Electronica - "repair" Report by Roshan Peiris
Background Ars Electronica Festival 2010, as every year, was held in Linz, Austria from the 2nd to the 11th ofSeptember 2010. The theme of this year’s festival was “repair” which focused on innovative solutions towards many of societal issues. This year the festival was dispersed over few key locations in the city with bulk of the installations being at the Tabakfabrik of Linz. Tabakfabrik is an old tobacco factory that was set up in 1850 for the manufacture of cigars and pipes. After its constant growth throughout the years that expanded its workforce to approximately 1000 people, the factory ceased its operations in 2009. The city of Linz recently acquired the Tabakfabrik again is currently being assessed for its future options of use. AmbiKraf installation We presented “AmbiKraf – Breathing life into textiles” as an installation in the ‘Future Factory’ category. Here we presented an interactive byobu screen. In this installation we had a custom made byobu screen that animated flowers appearing and disappearing in a very subtle manner. With AmbiKraf we showcased how the future technology can ‘repair’ the traditional arts and crafts of textiles by merging those age old traditions with the future technology. The installation did gather a lot of interest. In addition to the installation, Mili had the opportunity present a talk on the installation and our concept behind it. This talk was well received and was resulted in many more people visiting our booth. As much as all the good comments that we received we also received a couple of criticisms. In one occasion, a gentleman did not agree to our concept of repairing the dying traditional arts with technology as he felt that it’s still the technology that we are presenting. Upon more explanation he understood how we still try to use the same traditions and cultures behind the byobu art but simply use the technology to enhance the art for more contemporary audience. Another point I noticed about the installation was there were many people who just walked by it. The very effect that we wanted to create of letting people stand for a while and observe the art work also made it loose attention. As we observed few thought it was not working. However, some of them who were fortunate enough to see the flowers “blossoming” were amazed by the effect, and were amazed by the “slow” speed of the “display”. As we discussed with or explained to who missed the effect, we slowed down this animated display intentionally. As we observed people have become so fast paced. They move from one installation to the other as they expect the technology in the “Future factory” to be fast. But with our installation we slowed them down and let them really experience the culture and traditions behind this textile art. There were many who appreciated this notion. In addition, one key memorable points from this exhibition is when I received my ID tag as an “Artist”. It was such a new experience and I was honored to be part of the biggest media art exhibition as an artist with an engineering background. Much of our audience questioned us about our (me and Mili) different disciplines collaboration where we answered by detailing all the new experiences while not forgetting all the issues and frustrations we all faced! Some other works Here, I will explain the three works/performances that I really enjoyed during the exhibition. These works gave me a lot of inspiration amongst the many other works and talks that I attended. One of the key works that I will remember from this exhibition is the installation that was right next to us, Oribotics by Matthew Gardiner. This work combined aspects of many different areas such as origami, robotics, etc. What really appealed to me was the implementation of the project where I could see the quality of their prototyping from the use of the 3D printer to build aesthetically beautiful outer cases to well designed hardware circuits. I had the opportunity to talk to Matthew himself who did the 3D printing and also his father who worked on the hardware circuits. The next highlight that I really enjoyed was finally meeting ‘Asimo’ in person. Asimo has been one work that I have been most inspired by. Finally seeing his gentle walks, talks, waves, runs and all his other tricks was a really new experience. Three lucky members from the audience even got a chance to play an interactive game during the show. Earlier during one of the talks, one of the main innovation engineers of the Asimo gave a detailed description of the Asimo development process. This was interesting to see how they studied people’s walking etc. “Sounds of the Universe” was another performance that featured really soothing music from a live performance of a few instruments combined with many high resolution images taken of the universe by NASA and 3D animations. This was one of the best performances I have ever experienced which took the audience through a journey from the earth right to the edge of the universe and back. Some other key works: I3DG: A simple innovative way to make a 3D display out of your iPhone http://new.aec.at/repair/program/future‐factory/#post‐1737 Telenoid: A minimalistic design for the next generation of androids. However I felt that this project was fell into the “uncanny” valley in terms of the look of the robot. As agreed by many of the other users too felt this and some had even commented as “creepy” on a public comment board. http://new.aec.at/repair/program/future‐factory/#post‐545 Papplab: All the furniture at the exhibition was developed by this group. There simple design of strong furniture like chairs, sofas out of card board was stunning. Their goal: to design furniture that only lasted for the period of the exhibition! http://new.aec.at/repair/en/program/design‐for‐repair/#post‐1085 Plant: a robotic plant http://new.aec.at/repair/en/program/design‐for‐repair/#post‐1053